Testimony

by Paula Martinac

  “Naked men and women. If I . . . if I get aroused by the men, I feel this shock.”

  She watched his throat constrict, as if it were hard to swallow. “Fenton, that’s terrible. That’s cruel.”

  “Oh, there haven’t been that many jolts. It’s hard to get aroused when everything’s so clinical. I’m not making progress, so the doctor wants to send me home with the machine.”

  “Fenton—” She reached over and clapped his hand, which was cold. “Did he suggest dating Kathy?”

  “No, no, he’d say I’m not ready. I thought if I had a lady friend, the police might leave me alone.” His eyes watered. “And Kathy likes me for some reason. She wants to spend time with me. I’m cosmopolitan, she says.”

  Gen withdrew her hand from his. “You shouldn’t lead her on, Fen.”

  “Oh, you think less of me now, don’t you? I hear it in your voice. I can’t b-bear it.” Tears coursed down Fenton’s cheeks and dripped off his chin.

  He wasn’t wrong. Gen had always thought of them as being on equal footing, having to negotiate their secret lives as best they could, sharing their struggles. “We’re members of the same church,” was Fenton’s euphemism for gay people.

  Now, pity for him welled inside her. She struggled to clear her emotions from her face.

  “That is just like you to be so dramatic.” She fished a clean hanky from her purse and handed it to him, then fetched the box of crullers. “Better not to wallow.”

  She hadn’t answered the question, and she knew he’d recognize the dodge. Still, after a few more sniffles, he blew his nose like an obedient boy and helped himself to another cruller.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gen

  “Margaret, got a minute?” Gen asked after class. The girl’s face lit like she’d been hand-delivered an A-plus.

  Gen closed her office door behind them with a quiet click—something she rarely did because she didn’t want to alarm students by having them think they were in trouble.

  And like clockwork, Margaret asked, “Did I do something wrong, Dr. Rider? I still have your book—I just keep forgetting to bring it to class.” She bit a thumbnail, and Gen noticed for the first time how raw the tips of her fingers were.

  “No, it isn’t that, Margaret. Your paper on Brady’s legacy was outstanding. Bring the book back any time you can.”

  Gen sat down at her desk and withdrew the kitten card from her top drawer. “This was in my mailbox at home, and I wondered if you knew anything about it.”

  Margaret opened the card, her lips parting as she read the verse and inscription. She glanced at the Cracker Jack ring next, then back at the verse.

  Gen was no detective, but the girl’s confused expression suggested she’d never seen the card before. Margaret closed it quickly, like it might explode, and handed it back to Gen. “I—sorry, no, I don’t. Sorry.”

  Gen slid it back into the drawer. “Is there anything going on that’s troubling you, Margaret?”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “Dr. Rider, I swear I never saw that before. And there are lots of girls with M names!”

  “Oh, I believe you.” Gen reached over and patted her shoulder. “I just meant, is there any reason someone might be playing a trick on you? With a card like this.”

  Margaret shook her head.

  “I ask, because I’ve gotten some other anonymous presents recently. Candy and a box of Girl Scout cookies. Then a book.” She held back the title, afraid of frightening Margaret more. “And I do remember you dressed like a Girl Scout for Halloween.”

  “It isn’t me!” Margaret’s breaths became shorter, heavier.

  “Please, Margaret, try to calm down. You’re not in trouble. I’m beginning to think we may have a prankster, and I wanted to see if you had any idea who it might be.”

  Margaret’s head wagged No more slowly.

  “No one’s causing you any trouble?”

  A third shake of the head. Margaret’s hands curled into her sides. “Can I go now? I have another class.”

  Gen knew that was a lie because Margaret so often came to see her at this very hour. But there was no point in torturing the girl further. Margaret’s discomfort was clear. She was holding something back but wasn’t going to divulge it to Gen.

  “Sure. Sorry to keep you.”

  Margaret fled from the office, letting the door flap open roughly.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  On the path to the college library, Gen jerked her head at a sudden squeak of bike tires. A beaming Juliet rolled up next to her.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said. “I just couldn’t wait to tell you I submitted my tenure portfolio.”

  “Today?”

  “Ten minutes ago. You’re the first person I’ve told.” Juliet was wearing her hair down, held back by a tortoise-shell headband, and it fanned attractively over her shoulders.

  “Congratulations!” Gen said. “I have a good feeling about it.”

  “I don’t want to jinx it, but I do, too. Ruby probably won’t.” Juliet gripped her bike handles. “I kept the spring end date for my housemother stint. I can’t tell you how many times I retyped that page, taking it out and putting it back in. But no matter what they decide, I’m a free woman come May. I can always go back to high school teaching.”

  Gen wondered what it would be like not to feel so invested in her career. In the final countdown to her own tenure decision, she had slept fitfully, when she slept at all. Many nights, she read into the morning hours and rose before dawn, padding around in a haze of worry and calling Carolyn way too early. She wasn’t sure which she’d feared more: the loss of income and security or the humiliation associated with being denied the promotion. Like gossip, shame traveled quickly on a small campus.

  “We’ll have to celebrate,” Gen said to Juliet.

  She meant they should acknowledge the milestone of submitting the application, but it sounded like a premature victory celebration instead. Juliet shook her head.

  “I don’t feel that good,” she said. “But hey, why don’t you— Oh, never mind. I know you like to clear out for Thanksgiving.” Her foot met the bike pedal again, as if ready to head out.

  “I’ll be in town this year,” Gen said.

  She had always reserved the holiday weekend for Carolyn but told most people that she went home to Charlotte. This year she had nothing written in her calendar, and the disagreeable choice between actually spending four days with her parents and being alone loomed large. Fenton was heading to family in Valdosta. Ruby had offered Gen a warm invitation, which she hadn’t yet accepted, as any holiday at Ruby’s meant a house full of sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren.

  “You planning something?” she asked Juliet hopefully.

  Juliet smirked like a mischievous kid. “I’m hosting a Misfits Thanksgiving. The house empties out on Wednesday, so the plan is a potluck supper for anybody with no place to go . . . or no place they want to go. Probably a small group. It would be so much more fun if you could come.”

  Gen snapped up the invitation, offering to bring a pie from the bakery and a bottle of cream sherry that was calling for someone to drink it

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lee-Anne

  Lee-Anne’s hand hesitated before knocking on the office door that read “Professor H. Thoms III.” The rhythmic click of typewriter keys floated through the open transom. Other male professors had their wives or secretaries type their articles, but Dr. Thoms liked to pound away at his Underwood himself.

  “My wife may object, but I will be buried with this beauty,” he said with pride. Lee-Anne couldn’t understand the attachment to a noisy piece of machinery so old her grandfather might have owned it. Her own typewriter was a sleek Olympia portable her parents had bought for her freshman year.

  She rapped twice on the door, then listened, but the typewriter clattered on. Relief rushed through her, and instead of knocking again more loudly, she turned to leave. Lee-Anne was halfway down the hallway, alm
ost to the rear door of Waylon and escape, when Dr. Thoms’s voice called out, “Lee-Anne! Where are you going?”

  Lee-Anne pivoted, offering him a sheepish smile. “I didn’t want to bother you. Sounds like you’re hard at work on something important.”

  “Just a book review. Nothing that can’t wait. Come on back now.”

  The professor flapped his hand at her until she moseyed to his office. His space was enviably roomy, the equivalent of three professors’ offices put together, with a round conference table and a comfy sofa.

  Her mother said she was lucky Dr. Thoms took an interest in her studies. He hailed from one of western Virginia’s most distinguished families, and the Civil War statue of Big Beau in the town park commemorated his ancestor.

  “Such a handsome man, too,” her mother added, explaining he’d been a heartthrob when she was in college. Now Dr. Thoms had salt-and-pepper hair and a close-cropped beard that accented his profile. But it was his honeyed voice that appealed to Lee-Anne more than his looks.

  The door behind them closed. All the girls knew about Dr. Thoms. He’d divorced his first wife to marry one of his students, but his eye continued to rove.

  It had landed on Lee-Anne last spring, when she enrolled in his American history survey. Late in the semester, he suggested she major in history because of an innate talent at not only absorbing information but synthesizing it. He offered to be her adviser. Until that moment, she had planned on music as her major—she’d studied piano since she was six—but the interest he showed in her flattered her.

  This fall, they began meeting once a week. When she asked around, no other girls met with their advisers in private so often—maybe once or twice a semester.

  They’d begin at his desk, talking about her studies, but the conversation would coast into other topics. Dr. Thoms showed an inordinate amount of interest in Dr. Rider. He was either disgusted by her or in love with her; Lee-Anne couldn’t tell which. He was especially intrigued by Dr. Rider’s “History of the South” course, but Lee-Anne only had secondhand knowledge of that. She did, however, share her syllabus from the Civil War class.

  “Good girl,” he said approvingly when he perused it.

  During those initial fifteen or twenty minutes, Dr. Thoms scratched out notes while they talked. Lee-Anne focused her attention on a handsome photo on his desk of him, his wife, and their two young sons in a casual pose on their front porch, happy grins lighting their faces. With the younger boy perched on his knee gripping a floppy stuffed rabbit, Dr. Thoms resembled any affectionate father. He once commented with amusement that the little boy “will not let go of that thing, not even to let his mama wash it.”

  Eventually, their meetings would shift. Her professor pushed back from his desk and said, “Let’s move our tête-à-tête to the sofa, shall we?”

  The first time he used the phrase, Lee-Anne asked him for the definition. “It sounds French,” she said.

  He smiled in a leisurely way and said it meant a private conversation for two. Later, she looked it up in the library dictionary, scanning the page hurriedly for more explanation but finding nothing about the way his hand had traveled up her thigh.

  Now, his question always made something lock up inside her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gen

  When Ruby pressured her about Thanksgiving, Gen found herself juggling two invitations.

  She stopped first at the Woods’s house, where Ruby had taken over the cooking responsibilities from her husband and cordoned herself in the kitchen with her daughters-in-law. The young women shooed Gen into the family room, where Darrell and his sons watched football.

  “My money’s on the Lions,” Darrell Jr., who liked to be called Dave, said. “How about you, Professor?”

  Ruby’s oldest son handed her a whiskey sour. She had known Dave and his brothers since before any of them could drive, and it felt odd to be drinking socially with them now.

  “Dave, it’s really okay to call me Gen.”

  He looked embarrassed, as if she’d asked him to call her darling.

  Between polite exchanges of adult conversation with Gen—“What’re you teaching this semester, Professor?”—father and sons shouted at the players on the TV screen like they were in the room. Ruby’s middle son paced the floor anxiously, carrying his infant girl like a football. Dave’s boisterous boys darted in and out of the room and ignored their father’s weak entreaties to “stop that running, y’all. I’m not going to say it again.”

  To make matters worse, Gen didn’t understand the game and didn’t care to. She’d learned the basics from long-ago Thanksgivings with her father and brother-in-law, but aside from touchdowns and field goals, she wasn’t sure why the men were screaming so much. She drank her cocktail in silence, the screen a blur in front of her. By the end of the game’s first quarter, she had slipped away into the kitchen.

  “Is it absolutely dreadful?” Ruby asked. “I can hear the shouting even with the door closed.” She smiled at Gen as she inserted a meat thermometer into a plump, golden turkey.

  “I don’t appreciate football, I guess,” Gen said.

  “Isn’t it just the dumbest game?” one of the daughters-in-law said. “And it makes Peter so anxious. I bet he’s out there wearing a hole in the rug right now.”

  Gen offered to do something, anything, but Ruby assured her they had the menu under control. She stood out of the way and watched the preparations, the proverbial third wheel. In all her dinners at Ruby’s, time had never ticked by so awkwardly. She would have to make her exit to Juliet’s before she got trapped.

  “I think I’ll just slip out now,” she said to Ruby after the women had wrestled the bird from the oven onto a serving plate. Gen placed her empty drink glass in the sink like a final notice.

  Ruby wiped her hands on her apron. “You don’t mean you’re leaving?”

  “I have a second dinner I have to get to.”

  The confusion and hurt on Ruby’s face stung. “But you haven’t eaten here!” she protested. “I’m sorry the bird took its sweet time. We’ll eat in just a shake. Why don’t you call the men to the table?”

  From the hallway, Gen phoned Juliet to let her know about the delay. The silence from the other end of the line was hard to read. Gen didn’t know Juliet well enough to gauge if it was distraction, disappointment, or displeasure.

  “We’ll try to save some booze for you,” Juliet said in a clipped tone that made it clear.

  When Ruby’s meal was finally served, the family ate in a whirlwind without much conversation except for passing dishes. Gen was grateful for the rush in which Ruby’s sons and husband raced to return to their TV viewing stations with plates of chocolate chess pie and Reddi-wip.

  “I really have to go,” Gen said.

  “Take a piece of pie to go,” Ruby urged, but Gen waved it off. A whole sweet potato pie sat on the back seat of her car, waiting to go to Juliet’s.

  At the front door, Ruby helped her into her coat. “You’re being mighty mysterious,” she said.

  “I don’t mean to be.” Without explaining, she pecked Ruby on the cheek and made her escape.

  The first-floor lights of Cavendish House were blazing when she arrived on the front porch. In all her years at the college, she had never been inside the stately antebellum residence, which had once been the home of a Baines family member.

  Juliet answered the doorbell after a long minute. “Oh, Gen,” she said with feigned nonchalance. “I thought you ditched us.”

  “I’m sorry. I had a hard time getting away from Ruby’s.” In the grand foyer, graced with a chandelier and winding staircase, Juliet took the sherry and pie as Gen shed her coat.

  A middle-aged woman was sitting alone in the parlor off the foyer, which smelled of fresh-brewed coffee and pumpkin pie spices. Juliet introduced the other guest as Fay Purdy, who ran the children’s room at the town library.

  “We’ve met, I think,” Gen said but immediately realized they had
n’t. She’d heard her name somewhere. “On second thought, I’m not sure.”

  “Happens to me all the time,” Fay said. “I have not-met so many folks!”

  Fay was about Gen’s age, with lines around her mouth and curvy hips that strained at her nubby wool sheath. A dimpled grin gave her a youthful air.

  “Sorry we’re such a small crew,” Juliet said. “Clay, a French instructor from D and L, was here earlier, and Rhonda from the Baines library, but they both had another engagement.”

  “Probably with each other,” Fay added with a wink in Gen’s direction.

  Juliet blushed. “I don’t think so, Fay.”

  They sipped their Harvey’s Bristol Cream, which they agreed was a bit too sweet but gave them a nice buzz anyway. Fay was a talker with a laugh that came in gusts. She regaled them with anecdotes about townspeople “who shall remain nameless.” She seemed to know everyone, having lived in Springboro all her life. Her marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended tragically when he was killed on Iwo Jima, and she hadn’t found another love.

  “What about you, Gen? You a widow, too? Or are you married to your career?”

  Heat flooded Gen’s face as she cast a save me look at Juliet. She hadn’t trotted out her deceased fiancé in a while, and the mixture of drinks in her bloodstream made her fuzzy-headed.

  Juliet rushed in to fill the awkward pause. “Gen lost her fiancé in the war, too.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it,” Gen rushed to add, so Fay wouldn’t press her for details she could no longer remember manufacturing.

  Fay reached over and patted Gen’s hand. “I know how it is, dear,” she said. “I’ve never had a greater love than my Johnny.”

  Carolyn glided uninvited into Gen’s thoughts, and her eyes misted over. Fay offered to bring her water, but it came out with an unladylike burp that shattered the somber moment and made them all laugh.

  The topic of men returned later, after a break in which they refilled their drinks and helped themselves to dessert. Fay said, out of the blue, “You know, I had a fella a few years ago who taught here at Baines. We were an item for just a slip of time. I often wonder how he’s doing. I don’t suppose either of you know him. Fenton Page? The theater director?”